2018 7DRL Starts

The 14th 7DRL challenge has started. I must participate, else I would break my record.

I had a couple of ideas running through my head for this year. In the end, I went for this one: Explore haunted mansions finding their secrets.

I don’t intend to make a full procedural point and click adventure. I am aware of the key factors that make them fun, and I don’t pretend I’ll be able to generate interesting characters and plotlines, less so in 7 days – no sir. All I’m doing is trying to follow the format, the presentation of the world reminiscent of that genre which I frankly don’t know much about but have always found intriguing.

For the art, I considered doing the pixel art myself using the original art as a reference (i.e., deconstructing some screenshots from the NES version and changing random bits), also thought on using ASCII art. But in the end, I’m going to try to aim at having higher res art done by Giovanny Ramirez, someone with whom I already teamed up for “Rise of Kramora” (my 7DRL from 2016). We are going for a simple and effective style, trying to convey a similar feeling than an old project of mine (Ancient Shadows, which deserves a post to talk a bit about it)

Some of the planned features:

Procedural layout for the mansion

Procedural room generation

Find objects or solve simple puzzles to reach new parts of the mansion

2D movement (real time), using arrow keys

My idea is to get to a first iteration where you can explore the mansion, find a treasure. If I manage to do that I’ll consider trying to add something horrendous to it.